


Shelved

by Ulliva



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2019-10-08 08:37:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17383271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ulliva/pseuds/Ulliva
Summary: rapsLogistics, logistics…





	1. Chapter 1

 

I put a dollop of lotion on the back of my left hand.

‘You want some?’

Bozena waved three fingers on her right hand. There was a cigarette wedged between two of them.

‘Thanks, sweetheart. It’s no use,’ she laughed. Her hands were short and stumpy, much like the rest of her body. She wore a skinny gold wedding band that probably hadn’t left her finger in a decade. Her nails were always done. They were pink, square and about a week overdue for a touch-up. There were white flower designs on the middle finger of each hand. I offered some hand cream to the short girl to her right. She took some.

‘Bet your hands feel like cardboard,’ I smiled. I’d been doing a lot of smiling today. Kelley was new. It was her second shift with Bozena, who’d been working in order fulfillment at the warehouse for longer than that ring had been stuck on her finger. Kelley was nineteen, a student, and picking up a few shifts.

‘Do you get used to it?’ She rubbed her fingertips together and frowned.

‘Not really,’ I replied honestly. ‘No one likes dry hands.’ She pulled up one corner of her mouth.

‘If you’re thinking of how dry your hands feel, you’re too slow,’ Bozena joked. She dropped her cigarette on the concrete and stubbed it out with the tip of her slip-on sneaker. She swore by those ugly, woven Skechers. They did seem comfy.

‘How are you doing so far?’ Kelley looked at Bozena for a reaction, but she was already lighting her next cigarette. She smoked the kind that smelled like old people, and stung in the back of your nose. I was standing on her good side; the cloud of smoke didn’t billow in my face after each drag.

‘It’s actually kind of fun,’ Kelley replied. ‘I’m still a little slow though.’

‘Oh, she’s doing fine. Slow and steady wins the race. Right, Timmy?’ Bozena elbowed me in the arm. When I’d first arrived two years ago, I’d really hit the ground running. A lot of the orders had been a little off though.

‘Yeah, you’ll be able to pick up the pace once you know where everything is,’ I said. ‘Your arms just kinda grow a memory.’ She laughed again.

‘There’s just—so _much_. And all the names are so similar,’ Kelley remarked. Bozena liked to tell every new kid how much harder our job was than the warehouse next door. They fulfilled sports merchandise orders all day. Just shirts and caps. Picking consmetics was a lot harder. The products were all tiny, fragile, and you actually had to read what was on each box. I guessed that was true, but I’d never worked at the other warehouse, so I couldn’t really judge. I was sure they shipped more than just jerseys and caps though. ‘I don’t know how you do all of that on your own,’ she added.

‘Oh, it’s fine,’ I shrugged. We were usually two at a station. There were eight stations. One person would pick orders from inventory and put them in bins, tick them off on the computer to let customers know we were on it. The other would pack and drop everything on the mail cart to be shipped. You shared the _mise en place,_ like folding boxes and making sure everything was in the right spot to begin with. None of the fulfillment was automated; the warehouse just wasn’t big enough for something like that to pay off. Shifts were eight hours long, and there were two shifts a day. The warehouse closed at night, unless there was a holiday coming up, or a sale on. I shared my pick station with Bozena, but in the past few weeks, two girls had moved on to what they called ‘real jobs’. Something they’d gone to school for, and required a little more thinking. Most girls either worked a couple days a week during their studies, or full time for a few months after graduating. After two years, I had to admit that this _was_ my real job, but I didn’t really mind it. The pay was honest, and we had some benefits. I didn’t have to drive too far, and I had enough time left to do whatever I wanted. I waited tables at a restaurant on the weekend for some pocket money. It was fine.

It was late afternoon, and we had quite a few hours to go before our shift was over. Late shift was from two to ten. It was scalding outside, so we were hiding out in the shadow the warehouse offered. The stockers were not. Half a dozen of them hung out in the parking lot, some of them with beers. Most of them had taken their shirts off and flung them over their shoulders. I knew they had different hours, so maybe some of them were already done for the day. I also knew they’d have a beer in their break if their coordinator had gone home, whether they were done or not. They loved to hang out together after work too.

‘Someone should report them,’ Bozena shook her head.

‘I could use a beer,’ I sighed. The sound of a can opening made the hair on the back of my damp neck stand up. These guys were huge, they wouldn’t be drunk after a beer or two.

‘That one’s kinda cute,’ Kelley tried. ‘Dark hair,’ she clarified.

‘Nick Delli Santi? That’s the worst one,’ Bozena exclaimed. Nick was a pig, but he was kinda cute. Bozena hated all of them. The guys could be pretty rowdy and it echoed in the warehouse. I didn’t really care.

‘Oh, he's Italian?’ Kelley seemed even more intrigued now. She looked him up and down from a distance, shielding her eyes from the sun.

‘Pff, I’ve never seen an Italian his size. Must be mixed with something,’ Bozena speculated. She always made the wildest accusations, based on nothing. She liked her Europeans purebred, like herself. She was one hundred percent Polish, and extremely proud of it. Second generation; her parents had emigrated shortly after the Second World War. She’d been very excited when she first heard my name. Not so much when I’d told her only my dad was French. At least I still spoke the language; a redeeming quality.

‘They wouldn’t hire some scrawny Italian guy to do the heavy lifting,’ I tried to defend him. I didn’t really know any of the stockers. We didn’t hang out together. They processed incoming stock, and we picked and filled orders from that stock. There was little overlap.

‘Yeah, that other guy is even bigger,’ Kelley remarked.

‘Armie,’ I told her.

‘Arm _and_ ,’ Bozena corrected. She pronounced it in the weirdest way. ‘I saw his work ID,’ she said knowingly, like it was a state secret.

‘My work ID says Timothée, Bozena. You don’t call me that either.’ I rarely made the effort to argue with her, because there was no point.

‘I don’t know why you’re defending them. Bunch of overgrown jocks,’ she spat. She used a hard ‘o’ in jock. It sounded weird.

‘They’re fine,’ I told Kelley. ‘Just a little juvenile.’ She was nineteen though. It could work. 

 

I’d spent most of the morning folding boxes, so I could work off my orders quickly in the afternoon. Since I was alone at my station, I could wear my headphones without feeling guilty. Music always helped shifts go by faster. I picked the items for my orders from the shelves and packed them ten at a time. I wasn’t quite as fast as a team of two, but I wasn’t far off. I walked a lot faster than most of the girls. As the end of the evening shift crept closer, our shelves were in dire need of restocking. I’d already put aside several orders because I’d run out of a couple of items. Kyle dropped a large box on the long table next to me, and the two girls immediately started unpacking and restocking their inventory. I took my headphones off and gave him a questioning look. They were running behind. I blamed the beers.

‘I think Armie was heading over to you,’ he assured me. He looked over his shoulder. Armie emerged from the other end of the warehouse. He set a similarly large box on my table, right on top of my order list. I hoped the box wasn’t too dirty.

‘You alone here?’ He looked behind me in the aisle. I turned to look as well, as if I wasn’t sure.

‘Yeah, we had two leavers a couple weeks ago,’ I told him. ‘It’s not so bad,’ I shrugged.

‘You could help him by restocking his items,’ Bozena cut in from a couple of tables away. ‘Which is actually part of your job anyway,’ she said pointedly.

‘It’s fine,’ I told Armie. I knew it was part of their job, but the stockers were lousy at keeping the products apart, so it usually did more harm than good if they helped out.

 

‘No, I can do it.’ Armie lifted the box again. Two sheets of paper were stuck to the bottom already, so I slammed my hand down to keep everything from getting out of order. I put my headphones back on and started packaging the orders I’d prepared. Armie squinted at most products he produced from the box and hesitantly put them on the narrow shelves. I smirked. The guys loved to make fun of me for being the only guy at the ‘pick ’n’ mix’. After a full year of working together, they’d learned my name when they had dinner at the restaurant one night. I’d given their table to someone else. Until then they’d called me nicknames around the warehouse—some nicer than others. At least I was just Timmy now. I dropped four stacked boxes on the mail cart and heard some noise behind me. I lifted my headphones from one ear and listened to Nick poking fun at Armie for stocking my shelves. It was less manly than riding a forklift or lifting heavy things, of course.

‘Wanna stock mine too?’ Nick sank through his knees a little, suggesting he was gonna throw his box at Armie.

‘Don’t—‘ Armie protested, quickly putting the box he had in his one arm on the ground. He caught Nick’s box just in time. I hadn’t been paying close attention, but Nick hadn’t been alone in his playful mocking. A station over, Kyle had returned with another box. He made the same gesture as Nick had, only he didn’t wait for Armie to put down the box he was already holding. These boxes were _heavy_. The guys would fill them to the brim so they wouldn’t have to walk twice. I felt it happened slowly, but it must have still been too fast; Kyle tossed his box over to Armie, who attempted to catch it in one arm. He did, although it traveled twice the distance. He held it for a split second before it slipped from his hand and thudded to the floor. He crumpled up next to it. I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening. ‘Jesus _fuck_ —‘ he shouted. 

‘Language!’ Bozena immediately reacted, clutching the gold cross that dangled from her neck.

‘Why don’t you go suck a dick, Bozena,’ Armie shouted back. She had no response. I suppressed a laugh. He had his back turned toward me, but he sounded winded. He went from squatting to carefully sitting down on the smooth concrete floor. I slammed my headphones down on the table and ran over, since no one else appeared to move. There was a lot of huffing and puffing, and Armie’s right arm was kind of limp by his side, the back of his hand resting on the ground.

‘Fuck, did you break it?’ I put a hand on his other shoulder to take a good look at him. Nick watched from a couple of feet away.

‘Oh, good job, Kyle. You broke Armie’s arm,’ he reported to Kyle. Kyle didn’t audibly react.

‘It’s not broken, it’s my chest,’ Armie groaned. He let his head fall back and swore again. His face was suddenly red, like he was holding his breath.

‘Are you having a heart attack? You smoke too much, I keep telling you,’ Nick attempted a second time.

‘It’s not a fucking heart attack. Something—ripped,’ he described.

‘I think you should call 911,’ I tried.

‘Fuck no,’ Armie shook his head. ‘I’m already in enough debt as it is. I’ll be fine, just give me a minute,’ he sighed, still out of breath. After a few beats, he tried to lift his arm, but quickly changed his mind.

‘I think it’s covered,’ I suggested.

‘Right, you _think_. Can’t take that risk,’ he snapped at me. I had to forgive him. It seemed like he was in a lot of pain. ‘One of you idiots drive me,’ he ordered, coming to terms with the fact that he needed to see a doctor. Kyle’s cheeks were burning.

‘We’ve had some beers, Armie—if we get pulled over—‘

‘Jesus, you’re all useless,’ I sighed. ‘Help him in my car. Bozena, can you take my orders?’ I could tell she wanted to make a comment, but she held her tongue for once. I put my headphones back around my neck and patted my front pocket to confirm my keys were in there. Nick had tugged Armie off the floor with some swearing while Kyle remained completely useless.

 

The drive to the hospital seemed to take forever. I tried to avoid potholes and speed bumps, because those made him groan even louder. It seemed like reality was settling in though. He was a lot quieter than he had been back at work. He looked close to tears. I tried not to look over too much, to respect his privacy in some weird way. I barely knew this guy. I wasn’t entirely sure he remembered my name. This is was probably the most time we’d ever spent together. I didn’t know who was more relieved when the exit sign came into view.

‘What channel is this?’ Armie squinted at the center console.

‘Oh, sorry—‘ I turned the volume down. ‘It’s my phone, it connects automatically,’ I explained.

‘No, I like it.’ He used his left hand to turn the music back up. ‘I just didn’t have you down as a hip hop kind of guy,’ he thought out loud.

‘What kind of guy did you have me down as?’

Armie turned his head towards me, and then went back to watching the road; he didn’t have me down as any kind of guy, because I’d never crossed his mind.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied, confirming my suspicion. I cleared my throat.

‘Almost there,’ I announced. ‘Keep an eye out for emergencies,’ I told Armie. I didn’t want to end up in the wrong parking lot and have to walk over a mile with an injured giant. I’d already noticed the sign that guided us in the right direction, but Armie pointed at it anyway.

 

I had to help Armie fill out his forms in the waiting room. Sadly, he wasn’t a lefty. His pain wasn’t subsiding, but he was hugging his bent arm to his chest, and that seemed to help at least a little bit. He was more preoccupied with the insurance section of his form. I’d learned his last name was Hammer, he had a middle name too, but made me put just a ‘D’ in that space. I’d learned his address, his phone number, his e-mail. The fact that he didn’t immediately know who to put down as his emergency contact, and had laughed when I suggested his mom. I kept my mouth closed and scratched my chin with the pen. It sounded like he was looking for a contact by process of elimination. Nick never picked up his phone, he only texted. His roommate worked too far away; it would take her over an hour to make it to the hospital. Armie seemed embarrassed by how long it was taking him to come up with anyone.

‘Do you want me to just put down my number? I live—it’s like a fifteen-minute drive from work,’ I told him, to give him an idea of how far it was from the hospital. I don’t know why I was being so vague, the guy had just recited all his private information to me. He nodded. 

‘Yeah, yeah. I mean, they’re probably not gonna call you anyway,’ he tried to shrug, but winced.

‘Right.’ I jotted my number down and moved on to the part he seemed to dread most. ‘Do you have your card?’

‘Uh—‘

‘You picked a plan, right?’

‘Yeah.' He didn't sound too convincing. 'What card is that?’ He felt for his wallet in his back pocket and handed it to me; he only had one free hand. I could tell the wallet had once been suede, but now looked like smooth leather. There was some cash inside, and a lot of crap he definitely never used. Rewards cards, business cards for local restaurants, as if he was ever gonna call there. I found the blue card close to his driver’s license. I had the same one. I filled out his ID number on the form and tried to determine what plan he was on. I knew the company offered a few.

‘Emergency room is seventy-five bucks,’ I told him. There were a few standard fees on the bottom of his card. I tapped it with my nail. He sighed. ‘I don’t know how much your deductible is. Do you remember what plan you picked?’

‘The middle one,’ he mumbled. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘I read the forms,’ I muttered. My parents had taught me to read anything before I signed. It sounded like common sense at this point, but apparently, it wasn’t a widespread idea. ‘I think you’re on the same plan as me. There’s a reimbursement account that should cover the first half.’ I could feel he was uncomfortable talking to me about money, so I continued copying his information in silence.

The waiting room was quite calm. Apart from a mother who’d brought in her screaming toddler, everyone just sat and waited their turn. Armie had finally stopped swearing. It wasn’t that I was scared of him, but he was very loud. He’d resigned himself to a grunt every now and then, as if he just couldn’t get comfortable in the plastic shell chairs. He looked like he could use some distraction.

‘Check out that guy,’ I mumbled under my breath. It took Armie a moment to figure out what guy I meant. Across the room from us sat a short, gray man with no visible ailments. He’d been picking his nose for the past five minutes and I’d been watching him for way too long. Armie snorted.

‘What do you think he’s here for?’ I could tell he was trying to be quiet, but the bass in his voice even carried whispers to the other side of the waiting area. I thought for a moment. It didn’t look like anything was wrong with him.

‘Well, I would have said he inserted something in some cavity, but since he’s able to dig with a fierceness any miner would be jealous of, I’m out of bets,’ I joked. Armie shook next to me. I tried to keep my laughter down.

‘Ah—shit, don’t make me laugh,’ he begged, grabbing his chest again.

‘Sorry.’

I could hear him taking slow breaths. He straightened his back a little and immediately slouched it again.

‘I’m sorry we mess around with you sometimes,’ Armie started out of nowhere. ‘We don’t mean anything by it—at least I don’t. You’re actually pretty cool,’ he decided.

‘Thanks,’ I managed. Was that the appropriate reply? It had never bothered me that much.

‘I don’t know anyone who buttons their plaid shirt all the way to the top though,’ he then added.

‘Hey.’ I clutched my top button before nudging him in the shoulder with my knuckles.

‘Ouch, injured man,’ Armie defended himself.

 

I was happy I was on the late shift this week, because it was dark out before I made it out of the hospital. They were keeping Armie overnight, so my good deed was done. He’d have to call someone to drive him home.

I took my first break of the day in the break room. I lured Kelley away from Bozena by telling her it was air-conditioned to death. Bozena would have to go outside to smoke. I got us both a coffee from the machine. Kelley dropped a sweetener in hers.

‘How are you holding up with her? She not too harsh on you?’ I nodded my head outside, she knew who I was talking about. I didn’t want people to catch us gossiping though.

‘It’s alright. She reminds me a little of my grandma. Kinda bossy,’ Kelley replied.

‘Oh, jeez. Don’t tell her that,’ I laughed. The door opened and a gust of warm air hit my face. The break room was freezing. Nick came in with two of his buddies. I was surprised; they never spent their break inside. ‘Nick—‘ Kelley’s eyes widened at me. She wasn’t prepared for him to sit with us. This wasn’t high school, but in many ways, it was similar. Nick came over and leaned on our table. ‘Did you hear anything from Armie yet?’

‘He texted me yesterday to say he was getting surgery this morning.’

‘Wow, really?’ Kelley interrupted.

‘Yeah, something about his chest—muscle—reattach it? I don’t know. Apparently super rare,’ he told her. He sounded like a real expert, but she was enthralled nonetheless. She grimaced a little. ‘Yeah, really gnarly. He said it was going all blue.’

‘So he’s gonna be out for a while,’ I concluded. 

‘Yeah, he can’t move his arm at all for a couple weeks.’

‘Someone should drive his truck to his place,’ I suggested.

‘He lives over an hour away,’ Nick groaned. ‘And he can’t even drive it!’ 

‘It shouldn’t be in the parking lot for two weeks, or however long he’s not gonna be here.’ Surgery sounded serious. Should I text him too? Or get a card for everyone to sign? I could probably find his phone number on some mailing list. Nick sighed. I could tell he was trying to look like a caring friend in front of the new girl.

‘He should be out tonight, I could go pick him up in his truck and drive him home, if you follow and take me back,’ he suggested. 

‘Yeah, sure,’ I nodded. I could get people to sign a card by tonight. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ I looked at the two other guys, having coffee next to the machine, both with their shirts still on.

‘We’re not allowed to take breaks in the parking lot for a while,’ Nick admitted. ‘Pete threw Kyle out immediately. All fear tactics,’ he assured Kelley, who nodded in agreement. She dragged the chair next to her out from under the table, and Nick sat. He _was_ awfully tall for an Italian guy.

‘He did throw a forty-pound box at someone,’ I mumbled. I ran my nail down the ribbed plastic cup in front of me. The conversation had moved on.

‘I’m Kelley, by the way,’ Kelley introduced herself.

‘Yeah, I thought you were new. What brings you here, Kelley?’ Nick cracked a bright smile. I was air to them now.

‘I’m a computer science major. Lot of unpaid internships,’ she joked, rolling her eyes.

‘Oh, I hear that’s good money once you graduate though. Lots of opportunities,’ Nick talked her up. 

‘Yeah, let’s hope so. What about you?’

‘I work here,’ Nick replied. It sounded like an apology, and there was a short silence. She had a look on her face that I recognized. This was just money for her, not even a plan B. I’d learned to cushion it when I told people my occupation; _I work in logistics, and I wait tables on the weekend for some extra cash, but really I want to go into acting._ You always needed the ‘but’, so people could let out a sigh of relief, knowing this wasn’t all you were doing with your life. Nick didn’t offer her one. I watched the love fade from her eyes.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

I didn’t know whether to get out of the car or not. Sure, I’d driven him to the hospital and we’d talked a little on the way, but Armie and I weren’t friends. We were barely acquaintances. He’d given me a look when I’d arrived with Nick to pick him up at the hospital. Maybe it was weird that I was there. It was like I’d found a bag of kittens on the side of the road and dropped them off at the vet’s. I felt responsible now, and Nick needed someone to drive him back to his own car. I decided I should keep my distance though, let them catch up. Maybe joke about the weird kid that doesn’t back off. I could wait in the car, let Nick take him inside, take Nick back, make smalltalk on the way.It didn’t help that all of Armie’s supposed friends seemed so useless; Nick was halfway to the front door when he realized Armie wasn’t following. His right arm was in a sling, so he was having a hard time opening the door on his side. I’d just swung my own door open when Nick realized his mistake and turned to help. I decided to get out of the car after all. I followed the two of them and watched as Nick struggled with the key.

‘It’s—you have to push it in deeper,’ Armie instructed. ‘You know, it would be faster if I did it myself,’ he sighed. The lock finally clicked, and Nick walked in ahead of us. I could tell he’d never been there; there was a glint of discovery in his eye. I had to admit I was a little surprised too. The house was a bungalow-style building. One floor, unremarkable from the outside. It was cozy on the inside. I felt an urge to take my shoes off, but kept them on. At least the floors weren’t carpeted. Armie hit a light switch in the hallway and took us into the kitchen _slash_ living space. It had large, clean tiles. I could tell the kitchen was lived in, but it wasn’t dirty. There were leftovers on the stove.

‘This is—nice,’ I decided when no one else had said anything for a considerable amount of time. I sounded too surprised, like I’d just assumed he lived in a pigsty. Armie had lifted the foil covering the cast iron skillet and turned the oven on. 

‘Oh, yeah. This is all Liz,’ he mumbled, waving his left hand into the room. ‘I’m in the office.’ I didn’t know who Liz was, but I assumed she was his roommate. ‘I’m just gonna change, so take something to drink,’ he told us. I felt a little awkward standing in his living room, and I definitely wasn’t going to open his fridge and serve myself. Nick clearly had a different attitude towards life. I heard him rummage through cans in the fridge until he decided on something. He held it up and asked me if I wanted the same.

‘I’m alright, thanks,’ I told him. I decided to sit. It looked better than standing.

‘Liz is his ex,’ Nick informed me. I hadn’t asked.

‘They still live together?’ I felt myself make a face. If they’d lived here as a couple, and he’d now been demoted to the office, wouldn’t it be easier to move out altogether? Nick shrugged as Armie came back into the kitchen, wearing the exact same outfit, minus the shoes. 

‘You alright, man?’ Armie attempted a shoulder raise but quickly changed his mind. 

‘I’ll figure it out later,’ he mumbled. ‘I need to take something with dinner anyway.’ He one-handedly shoved the skillet into the oven and opened the little paper bag he’d brought with him from the hospital. Out came one tiny container of pills. 

We watched Armie eat dinner and Nick helped him in and out of the shower. Liz came home while they were both in the bathroom. She was sweet, but I couldn’t wait to get out of there. It was midnight by the time we started heading back.

 

‘Do you think he’s gonna be able to move his arm again in two weeks?’ From his tone, I could deduce Nick didn’t think so. ‘I mean, it’s more black than black and blue,’ he described with a frown.

‘I don’t know, but I’m not a doctor,’ I sighed. ‘I don’t think he’ll be back to lifting boxes for a while,’ I admitted. Armie had looked pretty miserable, and only perked up a little after the painkillers he took with dinner. Some sort of one-pan meal. It smelled great, and he’d eaten all of it.

‘Yeah, he’s worried they’re gonna cut him loose,’ Nick said, scratching his stubble. I could have sworn it had visibly grown since the sun went down. I wondered if they could fire him while he was out sick. I was sure they could easily replace him and just not reinstate him when he got back on his feet. Stocking shelves just wasn’t very skilled labor.

‘He should apply at the pick station instead,’ I joked. It was a silly image to have Armie on pick station, like a bull in a china shop. Nick laughed along with me.

‘He should though,’ he seemed to decide when he was done laughing. ‘I mean—he’s already on payroll. He wouldn’t need to be back to full capacity because there’s no heavy lifting. He could start as soon as he can use his arm,’ he summed up. I had to admit, it was the best thing I’d heard him say so far. With Armie still working at the warehouse, he’d have a better shot at getting his old job back.

‘I mean—yeah,’ I agreed.

‘I’m gonna text him right now,’ Nick said. He compiled a text and sent it. Both the sound of keys tapping and the whooshing of a text going out were turned on. I’d had my phone on silent since twenty-fourteen. There wasn’t an immediate reply. ‘Maybe he went to sleep,’ Nick muttered.

‘Yeah, he took some heavy painkillers,’ I nodded. I could tell Nick was worried about him. I licked my lips. ‘Why is he still living with his ex?’ I tried not to sound too nosy, but more concerned. There was no good reason to be living with an ex-lover, over an hour away from work.

‘They were always on-and-off,’ Nick started. This was already more information than I’d asked for. ‘I do think they’re really off now. She’s just so—‘ I was fully prepared for a rant about the woman that broke his buddy’s heart and kept him in her grip. ‘— _together_ ,’ Nick then concluded. ‘They just outgrew each other, you know?’ I nodded. Was I getting a comprehensive review of their relationship now? This was promising to be a long drive.

‘So they’re still friends?’ I always thought that was admirable, but it had never worked for me.

‘I think it’s mostly a necessity. I don’t think she makes him pay rent,’ Nick said. ‘He’s still paying off his student loans,’ he added. I looked to the side to judge his expression, and could tell it was a lot.

‘I didn’t know he went to college,’ I commented, again trying to be aloof. So what if he had loans? Who didn’t? And why would I care?

‘He dropped out,’ Nick said. ‘Don’t tell him I told you that,’ he added quickly.

‘Of course,’ I nodded.

 

 

The heat didn’t let up, so I took all my breaks inside. Kelley usually joined me. We didn’t get much closer. She’d made friends with two other girls, so she didn’t depend on me anymore. She talked to me today though.

‘Bozena is Polish, right?’ I nodded. ‘Right. She kept talking about Macedonia,’ Kelley explained her confusion.

‘Oh, was she getting political again? Don’t let her trap you,’ I warned. It always sounded like she was trying to get a discussion going, when in fact she was only interested in getting her point across. There was no need to reply.

‘Does she do that a lot?’

‘We had a heated argument about Catalonia, then I decided not to get involved anymore,’ I told her. ‘Just nod and pretend to be shocked when she sounds appalled.’ Kelley laughed. I knew one of her friends was called Christina, but we never really spoke. Christina was in her thirties. Most of the girls thought it was weird I stuck with the job for two years and hadn’t really made any friends. I didn’t mind the work or the people, but it was still just a job. I didn’t have the urge to meet anyone after hours or stick around to go for drinks. I had my own friends.

I hadn’t seen Nick all week, so when he showed up to restock later that day, I called him over. I watched Kelley purposely turn away as he walked past her table.

‘Hey, I don’t have anything for you,’ Nick started when he got to me. 

‘No, no, that’s fine,’ I shook my head. ‘I just wanted to ask you how things are going with Armie.’ That was vague enough. He could pick any aspect of that question to reply to. He wiped his face with his forearm and leaned a hand on the table.

‘Uh—yeah, I think it’s—going,’ he shrugged. ‘He sounded a little frustrated,’ he admitted.

‘You went to see him?’

‘Called him,’ Nick clarified. ‘He said they’d let him do a trial run over here though,’ he then seemed to remember.

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah, yeah. He’s just worried they’re gonna stick him with Bo, he really hates that woman.’ I didn’t know if the word ‘stick’ came from Armie himself. If it did, it said enough about his motivation. He’d be a burden on whomever he had to work with, and he obviously didn’t want to work with them to begin with.

‘Tell him not to call her Bo,’ I joked.

 

 

Armie didn’t have to call her Bo. First thing Monday morning, they stuck him with me. Since Bozena had only recently taken on a newbie, I was next in line. There was a moment of consideration whether it would be better for me to work with Kelley, but Bozena had the late shift, so that wasn’t an option. From the deep frown smoothing out in Armie’s forehead, I could tell that was a relief. If I counted correctly, it had been two weeks since his operation, and his arm was still in a sling. He was quiet as he followed me out of the office to start our shift. He seemed quieter in general, detached from the group. He carried two cups of coffee while I carried a box down to our station.

‘Right,’ I sighed. I’d never really trained anyone from scratch, but it wasn’t rocket science. ‘I guess it’s best if we just restock to begin with? Then you get an idea where everything is,’ I suggested. He just nodded. He tagged along behind me and watched me stack products onto shelves. I noticed him squint at some of the stuff.

‘The shit people put on their faces,’ Armie finally huffed. He shook his head.

‘I know. Some of the names are ridiculous,’ I agreed with him. I held up a type of lip gloss that had recently joined the collection. The description was eight words long, half of them referring to some kind of plumping action. Armie laughed.

‘I’m never gonna remember all of these,’ he said, looking around.

‘You don’t have to,’ I assured him. ‘You’ll notice pretty quickly people have their favorites. Some things barely sell at all, some stuff we have to refill by lunchtime. Just make sure you get the colors right.’ He nodded, seemed to make a mental note of that.

It would have been easier to let Armie do just the prep on his first shift instead of diving in right away. He only had one available arm though, so folding boxes was out of the question. I let him lay out ten orders on the table as I tried to prepare as many boxes as possible. If he was any good at picking, we could be the fastest team on the floor. There was no official count, but there was some implicit competition.

There was a lot of head scratching and double checking, which put me at ease; he was being thorough. I stacked the folded boxes under the table and set out ten on top, to match the number of orders we were working on. I dropped a flyer with a discount code in all of them. I checked the first order Armie had collected. It was a simple one: a primer and a translucent setting powder. Both available in a single shade. I wrapped the items and put them in a box. Armie watched me.

‘It’s good,’ I assured him. The second order was wrong. The eyeliner and the blush were right, but the foundation had the wrong shade. I switched them out. ‘Here, we needed a 30,’ I explained. I tapped the bottom of a box where it read ’30-SAND’. Armie squinted again. I had to admit, the gold font on nude packaging wasn’t the best.

‘I didn’t even see there was something written on there,’ Armie muttered. ‘You should check the other ones I did too.’ Right below his beard, his neck had gone red.

‘Sure, that happens though,’ I shrugged. ‘It’s your first day.’ I was talking too fast. Bozena would make a ‘tsk’ sound with her teeth every time I got the wrong shade of something. It had set off a pavlovian response. Anytime I heard the sound in public I immediately started tracing my steps to see where I’d made a mistake. It was like hearing my alarm ringtone in the middle of the day; just this uneasy feeling in the bottom of my stomach. ’Maybe you need reading glasses,’ I suggested. Anything to make him feel at ease, assure him he didn’t have to feel bad about making mistakes; maybe it was something he had no control over.

‘What I don’t need is more doctor’s appointments,’ Armie sighed. I noticed him check every product more thoroughly now. That was good, although he was still moving pretty slowly. I’d fixed Armie’s three orders and completed the other seven that were on the table, so I started wrapping. Armie could handle that too; his arm was immobilized but his hand was fine.

‘We’re doing fine,’ I remarked, looking left from us. Not all stations were manned today, and mornings were quite slow anyway. We were almost ready to stack ten orders on our cart.

‘I don’t know,’ Armie mumbled.

‘Sure!’ I sounded way too excited. I did have fun at work. It was more taxing than it seemed, but it was satisfying to watch the pile of boxes grow, and the stack of orders shrink. You could actually see how productive you were. I let Armie put the stickers with shipping information on. One got stuck while he was trying to lay it down slowly. He glanced up to see if I’d caught that, but I looked away to set out more orders. As long as the bar code for the tracking info was in one piece, I didn’t care how crooked the sticker was. There were bigger issues in the world.He quickly got the hang of it, smoothing a hand over the last sticker he put on before he began loading them on the cart. I noticed him watch the pile of complete orders for a moment, like he was surprised how satisfying it was. When he turned around to start helping me again, his expression looked a little brighter; he could do this for a couple of months before he joined his crew again. It was bearable.

I did most of the picking. Armie wrapped and put flyers and samples in the boxes, taped them up, addressed them, dropped them on the cart.

‘We need more samples,’ he announced halfway to lunch. We’d been working in silence, and found an easy rhythm. Armie had assured me I could put my headphones back on, but I left them on the table. I told him I’d leave them off so he could ask me stuff when necessary, but really I just didn’t want to be rude.

‘We used them all?’ Something didn’t add up. I looked at the half-filled mail cart. We got one box of samples per shift, so it was almost impossible we’d gone through all of them. I tipped the box to the side to find it was, in fact, empty. ‘How many have you been putting in?’

‘Like a handful,’ Armie mumbled, clearly realizing his mistake. ‘They’re free, right? People love samples.’ I snorted and a cackle came out.

‘We’re supposed to give people two per order, Armie,’ I sighed, checked the empty box again. A handful of his probably added up to two full-sized products.

‘I can open them from the bottom, take some out again,’ Armie offered.

‘No, it’s fine,’ I assured him. He was going red again. ‘I’ll put this box in the system as damaged and make them bring us a new one.’ I put my finger on the touchscreen twice and called Armie over to show him. I tapped through the back-end. There was an option to scan a product that was damaged for inventory. I hummed as I looked for the appropriate box to tick. Since it wasn’t a product with a serial number, I tapped ‘other’, where I had a spot to fill out what had gotten damaged. I entered ‘samples’ and under description I added that a product had leaked inside the box, rendering the rest unusable. I sent it out and went back to our list of orders. It had gone down drastically.

‘Are you sure this won’t get us into trouble?’

‘They’re not gonna check the trash to see if a sample has actually leaked. I’ve been here for a while, they trust my judgment.’ I grabbed a bin to start picking the next order. Armie stood idly by the empty boxes. ‘People love samples,’ I repeated. He smiled, the first one that reached his eyes.

 

Armie took a smoke break outside, but followed me to lunch. The cafeteria offered a small selection of snacks that were only semi-acceptable as meals. I usually steered clear of the soggy sandwiches or stale pasta salads. I got a boxed salad that was mostly lettuce and croutons. I was squeezing out the little packet of olive oil when Armie took a seat across the table. He leaned to the side to dig a crumpled pack of Marlboro out of his front pocket and straightened his back with a groan.

‘How are you doing?’ I asked in response to his groan.

‘Oh, fine—I guess,’ he started. ‘My back is killing me,’ he said, groaning again, straightening again. He didn’t tell me how he was healing. He unpacked his triangular sandwiches and took a bite without looking at it first. It was chicken caesar or something. ‘Do you ever wonder who you’re sharing a sandwich with?’ He turned the box in my direction to show me that there were three halves. I’d never really paid attention to it, because I never ate them. They looked grey and bland.

‘Maybe the guy eating your other half is in prison,’ I suggested. I stabbed a fork at four shreds of iceberg lettuce and found a very cold tomato in the bottom. Armie laughed harder than expected as I chewed. His face looked a lot softer than it had this morning. His beard was longer than usual, and his hair was shaggy, like he hadn’t managed to style it with just his left hand. I wondered if he could do other things with his left hand. I stuck one prong on my fork in a small bit of hard Italian cheese. It broke, so I picked it up with my finger instead.

 

I put my headphones away over lunch. Armie was talking to me, even if I had my back turned towards him. His voice so loud they could probably hear him three stations over. Every time he laughed it bellowed under the high roof. When the conversation died down a little, I turned around to find him bent over, shaking out his one arm, apparently in an attempt to relieve his back.

‘Told you it was hard work,’ I reminded him. He groaned as he stood up. Working in fulfillment was a daily reminder that humans weren’t designed to walk on two feet. It got better over time, but I still had bad days. Armie cracked his back. ‘Does your chest still hurt?’

‘Everything hurts,’ Armie replied.

‘You should get some good shoes. Supportive but not too heavy.’ I showed him the thick soles on my sneakers. Without them, it would feel like I was barefoot all day.

‘I have a headache from looking down all day,’ he added.

‘Did you drink over lunch?’

‘Coffee.’

‘That doesn’t count. Take some water,’ I told him. I had a reusable water bottle I made sure I refilled twice a day. It kept me clear and awake, especially towards the end of my shift. I watched him take a good few gulps before setting the water down. He closed one eye and frowned for a second. I knew that headache, where it felt like your brain was forcing your eyes out of your skull.

‘Come here, give me your hand,’ I said. Armie looked confused but didn’t hesitate to take two steps toward me and reaching out a hand, palm up. It was the first time I noticed he had a tattoo on his left wrist. I couldn’t read it. People rarely had only one tattoo. I wondered if he had more. I took his hand and turned it over, squeezing the soft pads on his palm, right below his fingers. The middle felt a little rough. I moved on to his fingertips and squeezed them, two in each hand, then his thumb.

‘You know how people usually have skeletons to hold them together?’ I didn’t look up, but noticed Armie open his mouth and then close it again, the real life equivalent of those three dots when someone’s typing in iMessage disappearing. ‘Well, Bozena is actually suspended on a dense combination of superstition, old wives tales, and alternative medicine,’ I said knowingly. Armie snorted. I let my thumb and index finger find the softest spot in the webbing between his thumb and index finger and rolled it. I dug my fingers into his hand. ‘She does this when I get a headache,’ I explained. It was the one thing that worked sometimes. I didn’t know if there was any real science behind it, but it did distract from the pain for long enough for an aspirin to kick in.

‘Huh,’ Armie huffed. ‘It’s kind of relaxing.’

‘Right?’ I looked up and let go of his hand. Armie stood there, looking at his hand for a moment. I turned and picked up my bin to finish the order I’d been working on. 

‘You’re cool,’ he then decided. 

‘You don’t have to sound so surprised,’ I retorted.

‘No, really. You didn’t have to drive me, or take me home, or sit with me. Put up with me here,’ he summed up. ‘I know it was your idea to bring me home in my own car,’ he said matter-of-factly. He apparently knew his friends well enough to realize that something didn’t add up when Nick had offered him an hour-long ride home.

‘Okay.’ I didn’t know what the appropriate response was. I just wanted him to stop thanking me for doing something normal. ‘I felt kinda weird coming into your place uninvited,’ I admitted. 

‘It wasn’t weird.’ Armie seemed offended that I would even think that.

‘We don’t really know each other, and it’s your privacy,’ I explained myself. Getting him home was one thing, coming inside and immediately being smacked in the face with his faltering love life was another. We’d barely exchanged two sentences at a time at work before that.

‘It wasn’t weird,’ he repeated. He took another bite. ‘You and Elizabeth would get along,’ he decided. The fact that he started talking about her in the context of things being weird told me that he knew why I felt it was uncomfortable.

‘She seemed nice,’ I agreed. He wanted to say something else, but I watched him change his mind.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keeping these (relatively) short and sweet! It might turn into more than 5 chapters at this rate though...


	3. Chapter 3

‘What was his name again?’

‘Armie,’ I repeated. I didn’t know how long I’d been talking before she interrupted me. I was sure I’d mentioned him too many times already. My mom scooped the milk foam off her cappuccino and dumped it in my cup. It started to look like a soufflé.‘Mom,’ I complained.

‘I don’t like this much foam.’

‘So why don’t you tell the guy that?’ I gestured at the barista with my spoon and scooped the foam into my mouth. I let it pass through my teeth before swallowing. It wasn’t very satisfying.

‘What’s the problem? What kind of name is _Armie_?’ She stirred the remaining foam into her coffee before finally taking a sip. At least the beverage itself seemed to meet her standards.

‘It’s short for Armand,’ I explained.

‘Oh, is he French?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I shrugged. I didn’t know and hadn’t asked. I couldn’t remember what I’d been saying before my mother had interrupted to question me about his name. I was sure we’d had this conversation before.

‘I’ve been hearing a lot about him,’ she said casually.

‘We work together all day,’ I shrugged. She was right though. I’d consciously tried to edit myself, but somehow I always circled back to updates on the same stories. That was normal, I told myself. I spent more time with him than with anyone else.

‘And he’s moving in with you?’

‘It’s just so we can carpool,’ I mumbled. ‘And only if he has to keep his arm immobilized for another week.’ It felt cruel, but I hoped his recovery would be slow.

I watched my mom lick her spoon and put it down on her saucer. It took another couple of moments before she picked up her cup and looked at me over the rim. Her silence was somehow more telling than any comment she could have made. She’d been to my place. That was the whole reason we never hung out there. She knew I barely had one bed, let alone two. I didn’t have an excuse to invite him. It had just slipped out and he’d accepted. I’d spent every day after that trying to illustrate for him how small my apartment was, and that I could really only offer him the couch. He was fine with that.

Armie was _easy_. It seemed like a rude way to describe someone but he was easy in every way; he was easy to talk to, easy to shut up with, easy to work with. He didn’t take my comments personally, because they weren’t. He always managed to get rid of Bozena in four friendly sentences. Included himself in conversations with people he didn’t know, and left them alone just as quickly. There had been jokes about us, and I understood. We made an odd pair, but it was just so simple being around him. He had a knack for starting a conversation mid-walk, which left me with no other choice than to go wherever he went. Lunch breaks, smoke breaks, bathroom breaks.I wondered if he felt like he owed me his time because I invested some of mine. I didn’t know at what point I needed to start turning him down, to let him know we were even.

 

Every couple of months, I’d make the stupid shotgun decision to have Adrienne schedule me to work during the week. I hated the overlap, but my wallet didn’t. I’d work the early shift at the shipment center, and then spend three hours in limbo before my shift at the restaurant. I’d racked up the reputation of never canceling a shift, so I’d backed myself into a corner and now felt that I couldn’t. By Thursday, I was thinking about it a _lot_.

‘You okay there, Timmy?’

I’d vaguely noticed Armie talking to me but it hadn’t registered.

‘Huh?’

He’d been taping boxes all morning. By now, he’d figured out a way to hold them down and use the tape roller with his left hand. His right hand squeezed the two flaps on the bottom of the box together. I’d found myself staring at how his hand covered the entire width of a box. He preferred packing and shipping, and I was fine with that. We worked faster if I didn’t have to double check all his orders. He was picking some tape off his fingertips while he waited for me to return to earth. The tip of his tongue poked out of his mouth. He was a lot.

‘Can you put a new roll in this for me?’ he repeated.

‘Oh, right.’ I grabbed the tape gun from him and pulled the empty roll out. I jammed a new one in and fed the tape over the serrated blade. I handed it back.

‘You can listen to music if you want,’ Armie said. He bit at his middle finger, apparently unable to get the flecks of tape off with his nails. I stared at him. His eyebrows were raised in a frown, like he was expecting some kind of answer from me.

‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening,’ I admitted. He snorted and shook his head.

‘I noticed.’

‘Sorry,’ I repeated. ‘I was just dreaming. I need a nap,’ I explained.

‘Then you don’t have time after work,’ Armie concluded.

‘I have some time after work,’ I offered. His face cleared up a little.

It turned out Armie had no plans at all. I had planned on running an errand or two, but he didn’t appear to be in a rush to go anywhere. We sat in my car after work, a common occurrence by now. Nick had asked if he was interrupting something the first time he found us there on his break. Armie’s response had been breezy, dismissive almost. Of me? We’d sat together every day after that, so probably not.

I bit off a piece of hard skin on the side of my thumb and chewed it while I checked my other fingertips. We’d just been listening to music, and Armie had been rolling a cigarette, but he suddenly held a round tin under my nose. I half expected him to show me his not-so-secret weed stash. I snapped out of my finger biting. _O'Keeffe's Working Hands_ , the tin read.

‘Best there is,’ he assured me. It was thick and greasy, but it sank into my skin quickly. It didn’t smell of much. I screwed the lid back on and handed it back. ‘Keep it,’ he told me. I dropped it in the center console.

‘Can I drop you off somewhere? How are you getting home?’

‘Liz is picking me up after work,’ Armie mumbled. ‘Her work.’ He plucked at the sling on his arm. ‘I _could_ drive,’ he went off on a tangent. ‘She won’t let me.’

‘You shouldn’t drive,’ I agreed with her. ‘I do need to be heading home soon though,’ I repeated. I didn’t want to throw him out of my car, but that was apparently what it would take. Maybe I just wasn’t direct enough. Armie mistook my prudence for embarrassment.

‘I know you work at the restaurant,’ he said solemnly. He said it in a way that seemed to imply that I could be honest with him, that this would stay between us.

‘It’s not a secret restaurant, Armie.’ I narrowed my eyes at him. I liked saying his name. He’d started doing it, and every time I heard my own name from his mouth, it was like it echoed through the warehouse and dropped me back into my shoes.

‘You were acting weird when we came over,’ he remembered, trying to make sense of the situation.

‘You were paying customers, I was being nice.’

‘But you never talk about it.’ He sounded surprised at my answer. I felt flattered that he knew of my ‘secret’ and hadn’t brought it up to the girls at work though. He seemed slightly disappointed that this wasn’t between me and him.

‘I don’t really tell people at work anything,’ I replied. ‘Doesn’t mean it’s a secret. Just—not my crowd,’ I shrugged. I could see him wonder if he was my crowd. Armie opened his mouth and closed it again. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ I added.

‘I know—I don’t really talk to people at work either. I mean—I talk to them, but you don’t tell them everything, right?’

‘Right.’

Armie looked straight ahead. He seemed satisfied with my explanation.

 

 

Sunday evening crept by painfully slowly. My feet felt broken, and I put on a face that was just miserable enough for Adrienne to tell me I could leave as soon as my last table left, instead of having to stay through cleanup. It was a perk I’d earned after working there for almost five years with no absences. I was never late, never forgot my shirt, had never dropped anything—big. I knew how to express quiet desperation while still persevering with my tasks. Once I had one table left, I started doing my extras—deep cleaning the tables in my section, refilling salt and pepper shakers, cleaning the lids on ketchup bottles. The best time to use The Face was when I was doing my roll-ups. I didn’t mind rolling a hundred sets of cutlery in paper napkins, but I knew that if I played my cards right, Adrienne’s heart would go soft and she’d quietly inform me I was free to leave as soon as I’d finished. Sometimes she’d just shoot me a wink when I carried the last plates into the kitchen. _Count your money. Leave the floors and garbage for the younger generation._

 

If anyone was going to invent teleportation, I was convinced it would be someone who worked late shifts. There was a small room that looked like an elementary school locker room; the bench was tiny, the coat hooks too close to the ground. They were all taken up by unwashed shirts. I never took my shirt off at work, never changed out of my shoes. I arrived dressed and always just jammed my jacket in a locker with my keys and my phone. When I took my stuff back out, I saw that I had a number of notifications. The last one was a missed call. I took my jacket under my arm and locked the door behind me as I left. Dropped the keys back in their spot behind the bar. I opened my texts.

 _Armie: Hey, I’m at the hospital now. Looks like I get to keep my sling for another week. Lucky me!_  
_Armie: Are you home? Liz could drop me at yours so you don’t have to drive twice tomorrow. If your offer still stands…_

The plan had been to pick Armie up before work, but this did make more sense. The last text was sent over two hours ago, and it had been forty-five minutes since he’d called. I didn’t like talking on the phone so I hit ‘ _omw_ ’ and watched my iPhone correct it as I got into my car. My screen lit up almost immediately after it had gone dark, so I glanced down at it. I couldn’t make out what it read. At a red light, I picked it up and put it in my lap.

 _Armie: cool_  
_Armie: your neighborhood seems safe at night lol_

The last two texts seemed less composed. How long had he been waiting? I stepped on it as soon as the light turned green. Straight ahead, exit, right. I sped up to make the yellow light and was sure I saw the red as soon as the nose of my car passed it. Left, straight ahead. I passed McDonald’s and realized I was actually a little hungry.

When I pulled up to my place, Armie got up from the front steps. It looked like he had a different sling, something more sturdy.

‘I’m sorry,’ I started as I got out of the car. ‘I don’t have my phone at work—‘

‘Not at all, hey—you didn’t know I was gonna be here already.’

‘Yeah, yeah. I didn’t—‘ I wanted to say I didn’t make his bed, wash towels, buy breakfast, but swallowed my words, and asked him a question instead. ‘Did you eat?’

‘I ate something before we went to the hospital,’ Armie mumbled. That was a no.

‘I’m starving,’ I decided for both of us. Armie picked up my cue and hopped into the passenger side of my car, like he’d never done anything else. ‘Do you eat McDonald’s?’ I’d worked up an appetite for something heavy and fatty.

‘I’ll eat anything,’ Armie laughed. I didn’t know how to take that, but decided I could at least offer my guest a hearty meal—even if I didn’t cook it myself. I switched off my left turn signal and turned on the right instead, pulling back into the street. It took Armie a couple of blocks before he realized the golden arches got smaller and smaller. He shot me a questioning glance.

‘It’s a little drive but I love getting these after work,’ I told him. ‘This place has the sweetest empanadas deal.’

I was a little relieved to find the place still open, even though I’d eaten there plenty of times after work, and much later too. There was always that fear of stuff not working out in front of others.

‘Hi, JP,’ I called as I pushed the door open. The little bell on the door jingled and the guy behind the counter jumped up. JP was short for Jean-Pierre. He’d told me his mother had been infatuated with French chansons when she had him. That had faded, but he got stuck with the name. I pretended to look at the menu.

‘Evening, Timmy’ he greeted. He smiled at Armie. ‘Same as always?’

‘Same as always,’ I gave in. He dropped three plump empanadas in the fryer and filled a cup of Coke to the brim. He left it on the counter for me while he looked at Armie, who seemed to be trying to solve a difficult math problem. He opened his mouth, but I explained my usual before he could say anything. ‘JP does three empanadas, one sauce, and a drink as kind of a—meal deal,’ I said.

‘Oh—I’ll have the same then.’

 

It wasn’t until we sat down with our food that I realized Armie might have been more hungry than me. His first bite took half of an empanada. He peered at the contents as he chewed with his mouth open. His hand raised to cover it after a while.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled as he moved the food from one cheek to another.

‘Hot,’ I agreed. I took a small bite and caught a string of cheese between my fingers.

‘It’s good though,’ he said when he finally swallowed. He dunked the other half into his personal portion of guacamole and put it in his mouth. He washed it down with some Sprite.When Armie finished all three of his empanadas before I’d made it through one, I dropped another one of mine onto his plate. He shook his head.

‘You can eat it.’

‘It’s yours,’ Armie protested.

‘I won’t finish all three,’ I lied.

He finished my sauce too. He refilled his drink before we left.

 

I put my keys away and had to take them out of my pocket again to open the door. I heard Armie shuffle behind me. I kicked my shoes off. Armie did the same. He smelled of smoke and something else. Armie didn’t seem as hesitant stepping into my place as I had been entering his. Maybe because mine was more of a pad than a home. I hated that the place had carpet everywhere. He walked out in front of me down the narrow hallway and immediately dropped himself on the couch.

‘Cool place,’ he decided. He looked around, even if there wasn’t much to look at. I had one large window in the middle of the wall, a double couch in front of that, and a coffee table in front of that. There was a kitchenette in the corner that enabled me to cook next to nothing and a bar with two stools that I never used. I had a double mattress on the mezzanine floor that sat on top of the bathroom. All my storage was under the staircase.

‘It’s alright,’ I replied.

The room fell quiet. The silence spiked a panic I hadn’t experienced around him before. My place was too small and there was nothing to do. At the warehouse, we could shut up and turn around, continue working. In the car, I could turn the radio up. There was nothing here, except for the hum of the highway in the background and Armie’s straw squeaking through the hole in the styrofoam lid. I watched as he held the cup in his right hand, his arm safely clutched against his chest. For the first time, it occurred to me that he might not _want_ to get rid of the sling. It had become a security blanket; an excuse. Can’t work on his normal team, can’t drive, can’t move out.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t get out sheets or anything yet,’ I said as I did just that. I got a blanket and a duvet cover from a drawer under the stairs. Pillows were no problem. I ran up the stairs and grabbed one of mine, tugged the pillowcase off and pulled a fresh one over it.

 

‘Timmy—‘ I stuck my head over the railing. ‘It’s fine. Relax,’ Armie told me. I tossed him the pillow and made my way downstairs again. He sat down, holding the pillow in his lap. The sling had turned into a more intricate construction, apparently to completely immobilize his shoulder and elbow. I frowned at it. ‘I’ve been using it too much,’ he explained.

‘Oh.’ Maybe he wasn’t using it as an excuse then. Did this mean he couldn’t work at all? I didn’t know what else to ask. My hell week had turned my brain to mush. Armie dragged his bag off the couch and made room for me. I sat down next to him and ran my hands over my thighs. ‘Is the couch okay?’ I didn’t know why I was asking, because it wasn’t like I had anything else on offer.

‘It’s fine,’ Armie assured me.

‘Right, right.’

‘I’m glad we’re back to the afternoon shift,’ Armie then said, changing the topic altogether. I didn’t know if I agreed. Sure, I hated the early mornings, but there was something about having a whole day behind you at two in the afternoon. I yawned at the thought of working at all tomorrow.

‘I think I’m gonna go to sleep. You can stay up a little if you want. It’s pretty dark upstairs anyway.’ The ceiling over the mezzanine was low, and it was pretty dim up there even in the middle of the day. I got up again. Armie put his pillow down on the couch.

‘I could use some sleep too,’ Armie agreed. I started putting the thick blanket in the cover, awkwardly shaking it over my head.

‘I can do that,’ he told me. I peeked over the blanket and stared at him. ‘Yeah, I can’t do that,’ he admitted. I chuckled and tossed him the blanket. He caught it one-handedly.

‘There are towels under the sink, if you want to shower or something,’ I added as I left up the stairs. Armie didn’t seem inclined to. I threw my work clothes on the pile that had formed on the floor at the foot of my mattress. There had been a frame too at one point, but I’d started to fear it was too heavy, and it was so loud. This was just as comfortable.

I removed my laptop and two books from under the sheets and fluffed up the three pillows I had left. It’d been ages since I’d shared a room with someone platonically. I didn’t know if this qualified though—the room part. There was a clear divider between us. I was too close to the ground to look into the living room, but I could tell the lights were turned off. I settled in and listened.

It took a while before I could focus on anything other than the sound of my own eyelashes against my pillow. I could hear Armie breathing through his nose. There was a kind of whistle every time he inhaled—I’d noticed that before. It made his breaths sound so much more efficient than mine. He definitely wasn’t asleep though; his shifting sounded too deliberate, a sigh now and then, more shifting. I propped myself up on my elbow and heard the movement downstairs stop abruptly.

‘Armie?’

I didn’t know why I was whispering. If Armie was asleep after all, I wouldn’t have woken him. I repeated his name at the same volume.

‘Yeah?’

‘You alright?’ I put some voice into my whisper, which probably made it even more inaudible. There was a sigh.

‘I can’t—it’s fine. I just have to—‘ Armie moved around on the couch again, as if to illustrate what he had to do to get comfortable.

‘We can switch,’ I offered. I sat up and looked down through the railing. Armie had one leg out of his blanket, an arm swung behind his head. He wasn’t wearing a shirt anymore. I could see the dark of his armpit against the pale skin on the inside of his arm. It was new. I felt comfortable looking at him for a little bit; it was darker upstairs.

‘Oh, no,’ Armie said decidedly. ‘I just need to find a way to—‘ He finished his sentence by attempting to move his body more towards the back of the couch so that his incapacitated shoulder was completely supported. It appeared he was too broad to manage that. I swallowed.

‘I don’t want you to be uncomfortable—here,’ I told him. There was more protest but I dragged the sheets off my bed and took a pillow under my arm. I could deal with having only one for a few days. Armie sat up as I came down the stairs, and for a moment I wondered if he was naked on my couch.

‘You really don’t have to,’ Armie repeated.

‘I can handle the couch for a week.’ I don’t take up this much space, I thought.

Armie got up with his blanket and pillow and pushed the coffee table back so he could move around me. Somewhere in between moving blankets around, his knee brushed against my thigh. I sat down and watched him climb the awkwardly large stairs.

‘Oh, Armie—mind your head,’ I suddenly remembered, too late. There was a dull thud from the mezzanine.

‘Yeah.’

I snorted.

‘Night, Armie.’

‘Night.’

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /crawls back into hole

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! I'm back on my bullshit. I got a little stuck with everything and I have absolutely no valid excuse, but nothing is getting abandoned! Hope you enjoy this new, silly AU. Rated explicit because you know me by now.


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